[eMod] Monuments XP v1 mod for LH 1.0, 1.1, etc.

I've seen a number of threads now where people are asking for a mod that provides XP for stationed units and champions in cities. This Standalone mod adds xp to Monuments, Guardian Statues and Guardian Idols.

This LH mod provides the followingfor these structures, in addition to their current benefits:

Monuments will now also provide 1 xp/season to stationed units, and 2 xp/season to stationed champions and sovereigns.

Guardian Statues will now also provide 2 xp/season to stationed units, and 3 xp/season to stationed champions and sovereigns.

Guardian Idols will now also provide 3 xp/turn to stationed units, and 4 xp/season to stationed champions and sovereigns.

Also, a clarification for those who may not know this, the Adventurers Guild still provides 1 xp/season, as it always did. The 25% chance thing in the description is a red herring, as the % chance is not working (never really has worked), so it always provides 1 xp/season. This mod does not change that.

This is a standalone mod, that simply adds the XP values to the Monument and Guardian Statues/Idols. As such, it should be fully compatable with any other mods, as long as those mods don't already add XP values. If for some reason a mod already has these abilities, they will now add MORE XP, as this will 'stack' with any other existing values for those structures.

Also, a quick note. As long as your unit STARTS the season in the city, you will receive an XP bonus, so for example if you attack an adjacent stack but then return to the city before the turn ends, you will get the XP bonus, along with the combat reward xp should your stack survive the combat.

To use this, simply unzip the single file and add it to your documents/my games/Legendary Heroes/Mods/Data folder.

Legendary Heroes 1.0 and 1.1 compatable. Should also be compatable with future versions of LH without any issues (will keep an eye on this), as it is a simple change. It would probably also be compatable with Fallen Enchantress if anyone feels the need to play FE again now that LH is out. Haven't tested this, though.

This WILL change the way you play Elemental, as units, Sovs and Champions stationed in cities will be slowly gaining levels where they didn't before, and you may find yourself waiting a few turns for a level gain before you send a unit out into the wilds..., and you may find yourself either taking cities out earlier or allocating stronger attackers to deal with the higher level units.

Note that the higher levels require much higher amounts of XP, so level gains still slow WAAAAY down after say level 4. As such, Sovs will probably find much faster XP gains out in the wild at that point, taking out the deadlier stacks of monsters and such. Of course, they may be better prepared for said encounters thanks to their 'training' at home.

This will also make Administrators look much more attractive when Selecting new Champions.

City Defenders are probably not affected by this, as they are only created when a city is attacked AFAIK. As such, they should still be the same levels that they were before, but I don't really know at this point what happens once they are 'summoned' for city defense.

I picked these three structures, as they are usually found in most cities, and other than the ZOC bonus they don't do much (guardians do defend if called on of course), and this gives players more incentive to build guardians/prioritize appropriate research than they had before. Monuments in particular are available immediately, so players now have another incentive to build them earlier...

FYI, I felt that messing with the multiple city hub files was a bit messy (essentially 26+ versions), so this was much faster, plus if modders make their own versions, that gets even more complicated.

Very cool idea! That chain of improvements is often overlooked and this may be just what is needed to spice things up.

I do question game balance though when comparing your new improvements to that of the Adventurer's Guild, the Arena, the War College, and the War Temple. (the first granting xp to heros and the rest granting xp to units.)

These all grant only +1xp/season and when, if to keep the importance of these structures greater than that of the statues chain of improvements, should also be increased a little....

Some of those structures may need some love in the XP or other department as well. This was just an easy way to get the ball rolling. I've been playing with it for over a week now of hardcore playtesting (working on other mod ideas with this going in the background) and I personally LOVE how this changes the game.

When I was typing the Adv Guild XP bonus thing in this thread, I was trying to remember their other bonuses. Looking them up...

Adventurer's Guild:

The Adventurer's Guild also adds +1 to Fame, as well as the +1 XP/Turn Bonus. If the new champ spread (3/50/100/200/400/800/etc.) wasn't so vast that +1 to Fame might mean more, but it does help slightly... I'm guessing that means one extra champ overall for a player by game end, maaaaybe. If it showed up sooner, the fame bonus would mean more. Same for Champ levels - by the time you build it, it only really helps low level Champions. So, it probably could use some love, or perhaps Fame should do more than just attract Champs...

Arena

The Arena provides a boatload of bonuses... +50% food, +30% Gildar, +50% to Growth when producing Growth, as well as +1 to Fame and +1xp to champs every turn. So it already has a lot of important bonuses it provides, the +1 to Fame and XP are almost afterthoughts...

War College

The War College also has a number of benefits... +25 to Unit Accuracy, -50% to training costs, +2 Levels for trained Units, +4 to Initiative for trained units, +25% to attacks versus the opposite race, and of course that +1 XP per turn for units. Again, a LOT of important bonuses there, and the +1 seems like (again) almost an afterthought. It does help for low level units that might NOT have been around for the +2 to level a bit, though...

Warrior Temple

The only significant difference between the War College and the Warrior Temple is that it provides a +25 to attacks versus damaged enemies, instead of the +25 versus the opposite race. Otherwise, it is essentially the same, so the same points are valid.

That being said, the three (four) structures above add a total of +2 XP to units, and 3 XP for Champions. With the total of +3/+4 I have added (assuming full monument to idol upgrades), that means +5/+7. I certainly could boost the AG/Arena/WC or WT values easily, but in the case of the Arena and War College and War Temple, they do so much already that you'll probably buy them anyways.

I can see what you mean about the other improvements already having a plethora of other good bonuses that they will be built anyways. Them being end game though, +1xp/turn isn't going to be ANY incentive to keeping your troops/heros in the city. That's just a 'oh, well...they're there anyways' type of bonus.

In my catapult's mod, I've moved the catapult being released with the Watchtower Improvement over to the Warrior Temple Improvement and gave the Watertower two archers instead. Even there, I really felt hesitant to put the catapult in the Warrior Temple because it already had so many other bonuses.

Never the less, since the Idol can only be built once, I would agrue the +2 bonus would be appropriate for those endgame structures.

You do make a point regarding where those improvement appear in the tech tree, and the impact of the bonus at that point.

I'd still be hesitant to bump it much, as the +5/+7 already levels a unit from L1 to L2 in two turns (if those units are being built in other, newer cities), but of course the 9 unit limit for cities kinda caps how many units you can 'train' at any one time anyways.

I'll ponder what you said a bit. I certainly could add additional bonuses to those structures.

As for the Adventurer's guild, I'm thinking it should provide Longstrider Boots in the shop for the city it is in, as well as for units in that city (not sure you can call that out specifically), and/or other cool things besides fame and experience. I'm twisted that way...

After I button up a few mods for release, I'm thinking of tackling a Warlords style mod. For those who might not remember that game, imagine Air Elementals moving 18 squares a turn, or 36 squares a turn on roads... I'll probably halve those move rates at the very least, but the game plays MUCH differently with higher move rates and such. Of course, there are the other bonuses that have to be looked at too (+3 Morale?!? OK, so how do we do Morale in LH? I'm obviously making a new stat, but what does it do?!?).

A Warlords style mod would need to maintain the 'Feel', and of course I'd have to be very careful about IP rights and such, but if it has the look and feel without the art, etc... . THAT will be a massive mod, as there are a LOT of units, races, mercenaries, and such to consider. Not to mention all of the Champion classes, so it'll take a while to implement... That being said, having Lord Bane's armies running amok sounds interesting. but I digress...

Let me ponder the XP (and Fame) thing a bit, GFireflyE. Thanks to some handy pointing by other modders here, I NOW know where to find the champs progression. Not sure what I'd like to do with that, if anything, yet... I'm kinda working the quest angle for more units and champs at the moment.

Has anyone had any issues using this mod with the latest versions of E:LH? I didn't see any issues with 1.3 when in my latest runthroughs, and I would think that it should work fine with 1.4 and 1.5, but I haven't downloaded/updated to those yet. I'm now holding off for 1.6, as I have a monthly bandwidth cap on my internet (and a $10/GB overage), and I see that 1.5 is still having some lockup issues.

Hi I don't mean to nerco the thread but I can't download this mod or your other one "Designable Roadbuilder & Settler Units" from the link. I even tried looking up the site and couldn't find anything about it. Thanks in advance!

The site is still active, you must be experiencing internet weirdness...

I've seen this happen a few times with other sites. Essentially, the nameserver routing information gets disrupted, so you termporarily lose access to some sites. Checking again later, or trying to visit some unrelated sites to 'coax' the internet to show you the 'missing' sites sometimes works. Usually, though, just trying again another day will work.

DDOS attacks or huge jumps in traffic on a hosting company's servers can also cause this to happen. We don't usually hear about them on the client end, but if one of the other clients using your hosting company/server experiences a huge boost in traffic, this can affect the other sites that are on the same server.

That being said, if this continues to be an issue, I can look at uploading it to the Stardock server mod place thingie. Dunno if a separate upload has been set up for E:LH yet, but I do know that E:WOM and E:FE had sites set up for mod hosting.

As for the mods, I haven't updated them since the 1.2 days. I've been holding out for a 1.6 patch before I tackle this again. Monuments should still work perfectly fine though, and I don't think any of the relevant underlying code has changed since 1.2 for Settlers.

Designable Roadbuilders and Settlers has an 'AI doesn't use it' issue, though, and I have no idea how to code the AI to use it.

The AI has no 'choice' but to use what Monuments does if you add it. If they have a Monument, Guardian Statue, or Guardian Idol in the city, the AI units automatically get the bonus. The AI doesn't need to do any extra thinking for the mod to just work.

Of course, the 'weighting' for which buildings the AI is currently choosing to build could be adjusted, but I haven't had a lot of feedback on this mod other than it's quick, easy, effective, and painless...

There are a few outstanding bugs in 1.5 that bother me, which is why I haven't upgraded from 1.4 yet. I'm hoping that my stubborn-ness gets noticed and we get a 1.6 patch that deals with all of those issues that haven't been fixed yet.

Oh wow I didn't think I would get a reply so fast thanks ! funny as soon as I read your message and checked the link it works perfectly,ya I guessed it was something on my end but I just wanted to check. after reading the description it made the game feel like it was missing something, much like the custom unit menu not having the weak trait lol. thanks again!

OK, so I've had a request to include this mod in another modder's package, that I've been pondering for a couple of weeks now (sorry for the delay in an answer Primal)...

My mods are intended for use by everyone, and I have no particular interest in 'branding'. I.E. 'this is my mod and don't you forget it' just isn't in my DNA. I'm more of a community player here.

Anyways, as this mod seems to be somewhat popular with a few here, and I do believe it improves the game in a significant way, should any other modders want to include this in their own mods, you are free to do so. All I ask is that I am credited in your XML for my contribution.

This is a rather minor mod code wise (only a few lines of code, probably the simplest and cleanest mod I've ever written), and can very easily be incorporated into the relevant .xml of other mods.

I'll still provide this as a standalone mod (really wish Stardock would get a WinCustomize page up for E:LH, but that's another story), for those who want it as a standalone. But for you other modders, you may feel free to add this to your own .xml, just kindly include my credit in the .xml.

I don't have accounts with either, and I've been being stubborn, waiting for Stardock to add an E:LH mods page, as they've previously done for E:WOM and E:FE, via the WinCustomize pages.

Just tried the above link, and it's working for me. My webspace provider has been having occasional hiccups of late, so the server/nameserver may have been down the last time you tried.

With the flurry of software patches being released lately (thanks to heartbleed, etc.), it doesn't surprise me that my webspace provider is having moments of downtime lately, as they apply patches to their software.

I just uploaded a copy to my .com domain name (above link goes to my .net). You can try this link and see if you have better luck.